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HOSTED DOCUMENTS
9-17-08 CGWDG meeting
minutes
Minutes for the Groundwater meeting on September 17th, 2008 at U32 Community Building
Attending: Jamie Shanley, Paul Erlbaum, Kate Rader, Carolyn Shapiro, Nona Estrin, Tim Jennings, Leanne Ponder, Miriam Hansen
We talked about some of the issues concerning Montpelier Spring Bottling Proposal.
a. Who would monitor the site? Would it be self-reporting? We will need to be citizen watch dogs.
b. Concern about selling company to others. Randolph has changed hands a number of times and in the end was owned by an out-of-state company. Paul raised the question of looking at what the town of Barnstead in NH decided to do, which was pass a town water rights and local self-government ordinance saying the townís water is public and cannot be owned by a corporation. Barnstead passed this in March 2006. Should this question come up in our next town meeting?
c. Scott Stewart of Agency of Natural Resources said in May/June that the agency needed more information for the source permit submitted by Montpelier Springs. They havenít gotten any of that information as of today so the application is on hold.
d. Concern over whether Montpelier Springs would actually be pumping since they have to go over a point of higher elevation. No answer to this question as of yet.
e. Who has party status for Act 250? Do the people abutting the pipeline have party status? This is new territory, and we donít have an answer yet. The town has party status and our committee could apply to have party status. We would need a packet of minutes (which we have), a mission statement (which we now have). Our name is officially: Community Groundwater Study Group. Our mission statement is:
The Community Groundwater Study Group is dedicated to conserving groundwater resources as a public trust of Central Vermont, thereby protecting the health and safety of the regionís residents and eco-systems.† To that end, the Community Groundwater Study Group researches issues relating to groundwater and public trust, educates its members, elected officials and the public regarding these matters, and advocates for sustainable use of our water resources.
We need to invite more of the neighbors around the Montpelier Springs to come to our meetings if they are interested in having party status. Once there is action on the Montpelier Springs Proposal, we can apply for party status.
f. Town Plan is critical. It must have wording in it concerning groundwater. Act 250 may defer to Town Plans. Here is a link for reviewing the proposed text to the Land Use Regulations. http://emsignpost.com/announcements.html
This important meeting will be held at the East Montpelier Elementary school, 7:00 PM on Tuesday, September 30th.
************IMPORTANT********* There is no action yet on any groundwater wording for the Town Plan. We need to keep on the Planning Commission to revise the Town Plan to include this wording.
g. Mapping. There will be a state meeting to help towns who are considering applying for grants to do mapping. The meeting will be October 17th from 9:30 to 12:30 in Waterbury at Room 100, Stanley Hall. It is important that someone from Planning commission or Selectboard attend because the town would need to commit $6000 to match the state/federal money. It is geologic mapping and would be useful for East Montpelier to have. Good to encourage one of our representatives to attend.
h. Nona Estrin brought up the idea of ìoffsetsî. This would be the town saying that the East Montpelier community has access to the water from Montpelier Springs Bottled water. It would say where the access to this water would be and would maybe be in more than one place. She suggested that this be a goal in the Town Plan and that it might be a topic of discussion at town meeting. She also said that we need to understand what it means to have water in the public trust. With this in mind, we added ìpublic trustî to our mission statement. We were told by VNRC that the Agency of Natural Resources is now writing the regulations that stem from the S304 Groundwater as a Public Trust. It would be good to follow up on what these regulations are.
i. We discussed the Kellogg Hubbard library program on ground water. We decided that:
Oct 16 would be the night to show the movie ìThirstî and have a discussion after the movie led by Jon Groveman about the relevance of the movie to Central Vermont.
Oct. 23 would be the panel. Ginny Lyons is invited to be a member of the panel which will be facilitated by Johanna Miller. Leanne Ponder and Tim Jennings said they might be able to do a story before and a story after the panel, but they would have to check on the date to see if they are available. Nona suggested we contact Susan Ritz because she has some experience with privatizing water in Africa. Carolyn called her and she is not available for this date (could possible come to the Oct 30th). She suggested we contact Dorothy Tod who has much more experience with water issues.
At a previous meeting with Jon Groveman, Johanna Miller of VNRC, Paul Erlbaum, Carolyn Shapiro and Rachel Senechal (head of programming for the library), we talked about having the panel explore a set of questions; the topic being water as a commodity vs. water as a human right.
We decided the panel should be small so each person has enough time to talk and have time for discussion. Sister Laurene Siber (?) from Vt. Interfaith Power and Light was suggested as another panel member. We would like no more than three people on the panel.
Oct. 30th: would be a night of art, stories, music around the topic of water. Marjorie Ryerson (Randolph) was suggested as a person to contact because she has a program called ìWater Musicî with slides. (Rachel said she could call her.) We talked about having dowsers come with rods and show us how to dowse; maybe see if there is water under the library! Would be great to have a story teller. For the month of October, the Hayes room will be full of visual art and water maps, places of water ritual, water music.
TO DO:
Tim Jennings said he could do a poster (he'll talk to Rachel about it) and he could also do a website for the community groundwater study group. Leanne and he will check their calendars to see if they can do the storytelling on Oct. 23.
Miriam said she would talk to the Bridge about doing an article and have them contact Rachel Senechal.
Carolyn will contact Susan Ritz, Sister Laurene and Dorothy Tod; she will coordinate the art work for the Hayes Room.
Nona will talk to folks about putting some of our above items on the Town meeting agenda.
Everyone: Talk with store owners to see about having art work about water in store windows, especially art done by children, students. Let Carolyn know of any stories.
NEXT MEETING: November 12th; 7:00PM, place to be announced.